


There's a giant octokitten loose on the Aurora!

by The_random_Ravenclaw



Series: Fics set in the same universe so they're kind of connected but also standalones [2]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Cuddle pile!!!, Don't get me wrong this is almost only fluff, Fluff, Humor, I'm so sorry about that by the way, Jonny's long dead pet(?) horse, Movie Night, Multi, No beta we die like mortals meeting the Mechanisms, Original octokitten character, Polyamorous Mechanisms (The Mechanisms), Polymechs fluff, Raphaella does a Science!, Raphaella la Cognizi has ADHD, The Mechanisms-Typical Temporary Character Death, The author is totally not projecting I don't know what you mean, The last chapters are less Raphaella-centric than expected, What to do when there's a gigantic octokitten on your starship, With a hint of sad because apparently I can't write entirely happy things, but not graphic, mentions of unethical science, there's some blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28942461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_random_Ravenclaw/pseuds/The_random_Ravenclaw
Summary: “Look it was a mistake, alright? I was just trying to make a liquid that would shrink people if you spray them with it, I thought it’d be fun for next time we go planetside. But then someone-” she aimed a pointed look at Marius “-distracted me so I forgot to cover the Science Liquid and lock the door. It could happen to anyone!”Or: the fic in which Science goes wrong and there's suddenly a giant octokitten roaming the Aurora after crew night.Also featuring: movie night, cuddle piles, death caused by idiocy, a plan, sproombas(space roombas) and shenanigans
Relationships: Raphaella la Cognizi/The Mechanisms Ensemble, The Aurora/Nastya Rasputina, The Mechanisms Ensemble/The Mechanisms Ensemble
Series: Fics set in the same universe so they're kind of connected but also standalones [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2106939
Comments: 39
Kudos: 51





	1. Lots of Science and a Movie

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome to this fic, I hope you'll like it! Have some cute polymechs with a side of Science (and me projecting onto Raphaella).
> 
> This takes place in the same universe as my Raphaella backstory, the first part of this series. You don't need to read it in order to understand this one, but I'd recommend it since there are some references to it throughout. The backstory was originally supposed to be part of this fic, but i split them because the tones became too different (this is a LOT more light-hearted) and the backstory grew into a thing of its own.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there's some Science, crew night and cuddles

Raphaella turned around to look at her new wings in the floor-length mirror that leaned against a wall in her lab. Instead of the usual metallic look, her new feathers were soft to the touch and looked real, almost like her old ones. They weren’t exactly the same though, these were made of an experimental fibre she’d invented that was much more durable and also fireproof, a necessity for living on the Aurora.

~~(No one would be able to cut these off and burn them. She would never be flightless again. No, she couldn’t go down that train of thought now, this was supposed to be a moment of triumph and happiness)~~

Ignoring the whispers in the back of her mind, she bounced a little in excitement. While she’d grown to like her metal wings (and the fabric ones she sometimes used for their shows as to not confuse their audience too much), these were so much softer! 

Scientifically speaking, her wing hugs would be a lot better and she could barely wait to show the other Mechanisms later. These wings also had another great feature: she’d installed small lights among the light brown feathers. They looked very pretty when she lit them, almost like the constellations seen through Aurora’s windows.

She cast a glance at the clock on her wall and yawned a little. There were still a few hours left until crew night, so she had time to work on another experiment if she wanted to. Maybe she should take an early break instead, she should probably eat something or take a nap. 

When was the last time she’d slept or eaten? Raphaella couldn’t remember, ever since she got the idea to make herself a pair of realistic wings a week and a half ago she’d been working almost non-stop. What’s that old saying, time flies by when you’re doing Science? Something like that. Sometimes when she got a good idea she couldn’t focus on anything else until she was done with it. When she came out of the Science haze weeks had passed. Oh well, it’s not like time matters much to her these days.

Besides, she took some naps this time around (and only one of them happened because she fell asleep on her notes) and she was pretty sure that someone (maybe Brian? He usually cooked) brought her some food at least twice, but immortals don’t need to eat or sleep as much as mortals do, so she was fine. Sleep was overrated anyways and there was probably something fun she could do in the hours leading up to crew night instead of taking a nap. Her brain was still in full swing, so trying to fall asleep would probably be fruitless anyways.

She already had a few experiments planned out or halfway finished, maybe she could work on one of those? There were the plans for a super-strong magnet over in the magnet corner (every lab needs a magnet corner, that’s just how Science works), some samples of plants from a planet they’d visited that she planned to use for a new type of poison and she could always continue her experiments into making a super-acid. There were even a few human test subjects left in the giant freezer that she had plans for. 

She’d been so excited to do those experiments before, but none of them called to her now. Maybe it was a mistake to put them on her mental to-do list, because the previously fun ideas suddenly turned into must-do tasks when put there. That meant she was unable to start working on them even though she knew that she’d enjoy it when she finally did. 

Sometimes having a brain just sucked. Maybe she could remove her brain and see what happened? She hadn’t done that before. No, that would take too much time and she’d be bloody when arriving at crew night. What could she do instead?

Raphaella walked around the vast lab and scanned the cluttered tables and shelves full of chemicals for ideas on what to do. The lab was filled to the brim with Science and different equipment in a mostly chaotic order that made sense to nobody except for Raphaella herself (and sometimes it didn’t make sense to her either). 

Perhaps she could go for the classic ‘mix chemicals and see what happens’ thing, because that was the epitome of science and always fun. Maybe she could test how different materials reacted to the latest iteration of the super-acid. No, she didn’t feel like it. Her eyes landed on a small, glowing vial in the middle of a workbench. Perfect.

Some time ago she’d accidentally concocted a purple, glowing substance when mixing random things together. Based on the components it contained, she thought it could become some kind of size-altering liquid which could maybe be used as a weapon, but she hadn’t done anything with it before the wing project commanded her full attention.

That would be fun, she could imagine how happy some of her partners (including herself) would be to have a spray bottle full of shrinking liquid to use on mortals next time they went planetside. Hadn’t Brian said something about making landfall in a few weeks’ time? That would be more than enough time to perfect it. Her wings fluttered in excitement as she took out everything she needed. This would be very fun Science indeed.

* * *

Three hours later, Raphaella hovered over a big tub filled with an electric blue Science Liquid and stirred it with a shovel she’d found in a corner, the only large enough thing in her lab. She hadn’t tested its shrinking properties yet, but it was a promising experiment. If it worked as it was supposed to, the Science Liquid would shrink any living organic material it touched. Maybe she should alter the Science Liquid to not affect the crew? She didn’t want any of them to accidentally shrink while having fun. That could probably be achieved with some DNA identifying aspect…

Her train of thought was interrupted by a knock from the door. Why would anyone… oh right it was crew night tonight. Someone must’ve come to fetch her then. She reluctantly landed on the ground and put down the shovel to go open the door. It was always locked, and for good reason: they had to make sure that none of the Science escaped. It hadn’t ended well last time that happened. Not the many times before that either. Thinking of it, her Science escaped a lot more often than it should. Eh, it’s not like it mattered that much, they were immortal.

She opened the door to reveal Marius standing outside, holding a violin to his chin and looking ready to start playing, but he lowered it as soon as he saw her.

“Hello Raph, fancy seeing you here!” He opened his arms as an invitation for a hug. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him, accepting it. Maybe she was a little tired after all this science. She wrapped her wings around him too for good measure.

“Same to you. Why the violin?”

“I thought I’d have to annoy you into leaving your Science and coming to crew night, so I was preparing to serenade you. I know you get caught up in experiments pretty easily”

“Oh” She buried her face in his neck. It was surprisingly nice with some human contact after one of her science binges and he was very warm and soft. Maybe she was more tired than she previously thought.

“Speaking of Science, are those the new wings you were talking about?”

She backed away and spread them so he could see the wings better. “Yes, I finished them a few hours ago! The feathers feel almost like real ones and they’re so soft”

Marius reached out a hand towards her but stopped halfway. “May I?”

“Go ahead”

He gently stroked the feathers and his face almost lit up. “So soft…” It was barely more than a whisper and he buried his hands in them. It felt surprisingly nice.

“I know right!” Raphaella felt herself going into excited Science mode and the sleepiness disappeared again. “Do you want to know how I did it?”

“I’d love to. You could tell me on our way to commons” He let go of the wing and held out a hand for her to take.

Raphaella noted that his violin was gone and she had no idea where it had vanished to. Interesting, so he could demanifest them too, not just manifest them? She hadn’t been able to work out exactly what the deal was with Marius’ violin yet, because even though they’d tried, he couldn’t manifest them at will so she couldn’t run experiments. He hadn’t even been aware of the spontaneously manifesting violins before she’d pointed it out to him some time before they found the other Mechanisms. Anyways, she shouldn’t think about that now, she was supposed to tell him about the wings.

“Okay, so what I did was…” she started as they walked hand in hand down the corridor towards crew night, gesturing wildly with her free hand to emphasise her points. Marius listened aptly, making sounds of encouragement in the right places. The door to the lab was left open behind them and inside, the vat filled with Science Liquid was left uncovered.

One thing that Raphaella loved about her crew and partners was that they always indulged her in her science rambles, something that never happened before. There was nothing worse than the feeling of noticing that nobody was actually interested or even listening to her when she rambled on about her latest interest and quietly trailing off, seeing that nobody noticed she was no longer talking. It always hurt, no matter what, a pang off sadness in her chest.

On the Aurora there was always someone willing to listen to her Science rambles and even if they pretended to be annoyed sometimes, their fond voices made sure she knew that it was just to keep up appearances. She was extremely happy to have found such fantastic people to spend eternity with and she wouldn’t trade them for anything, even when they were acting like assholes.

* * *

When Raphaella and Marius arrived in commons, where crew night was held, the others were already there. Nastya was doing something with the TV in the corner while Brian and Ivy tried to make space on the already overloaded table for the snack bowls they carried. TS tried to stop Jonny from eating the aforementioned snacks (Brian had probably asked it to). Tim and Ashes sat on the custom-made extra-long couch, surveying the chaos. Raphaella smiled softly at the sight, these were her favourite people in the entire universe.

Ashes looked up from the couch. “They’re here now, we can start. Are those the new wings Raph? They look cool”

“Yes!” Her wings fluttered at the burst of joy that coursed through her. They’d noticed something she’d made and liked it! These days that kind of validation wasn’t unusual anymore, but affection and validation still made her want to run ten laps around the room or something in that vein. Her hypothesis was that it had something to do with the feeling of being seen and appreciated for what she did, something she’d desperately lacked before, so now her brain gave her extra much dopamine every time it happened.

Raphaella had already told Marius about the wings, but she still wanted to tell everyone, she was just so proud of them! She used to be self-conscious about her almost physical need to tell everyone about things that excited her, but not anymore.

“I invented a new material for the feathers, they feel like real ones but they’re much more durable! And I also installed some lights!” Apparently Raphaella had flapped her wings a little too hard, because she found herself hovering maybe 10 centimetres over the floor, so she willed herself to stop and landed again. Then she turned on the blue lights nestled among the light brown feathers and they lit up the mostly dark room.

“That looks really good Raph,” Brian said. He and Ivy must’ve found space for the bowls because he was no longer holding one. “These were the last snacks, so why don’t we get settled?”

Raphaella moved towards the couch while Marius called out behind her.

“What are we watching?”

“It was Tim’s turn to choose, so it’s some old earth movie,” Nastya grumbled from where she was sat by the TV, surrounded by the extra screens she’d wired to it. “So that’s why I had to search through the entire intergalactic net to find and pirate a copy. Do you know how hard it was to access movies on his planet, it’s ridiculous. Doesn’t help that it’s from long before Tim was even born and that he wiped out most of the civilization there when he blew up the moon. But I’m almost done, I just need a few more minutes”

“I promise you Nastya, Totoro is worth it.” Tim said from where he was sat in the middle of the couch. “Just wait until we start watching, it’s one of the best Earth classics. And admit it, you like the challenge”

After some more grumbling from Nastya and a whole lot of shuffling, they eventually settled down on the couch. They’d had it custom-made after decades of fighting over the best spots and it fit all nine of them if needed so they could cuddle easier, although the Toy Soldier often opted to sit on the floor by the snack table instead. It liked to throw snacks at those that couldn’t reach the table themselves and made a game out of hitting their foreheads with popcorn. After doing this for millennia, its aim was scarily good.

Tim sat in the middle with Raphaella on his left. She’d wrapped her wings around both him and Marius, who sat on her other side. Marius was leaning on Ashes, who sat in the corner. Nastya sat at the other end of the couch, although there was some space between her and the corner. Beside her sat Ivy, who claimed there was a 64% lower risk of violence when sitting between her and Brian than anywhere else. Brian was close enough to Tim to lean on him a little.

Jonny laid down on top of them with his head in Marius’ lap and feet reaching all the way to Brian. They’d complained at first, but it was actually very nice to have a human blanket, even though he wriggled quite a bit until Tim threatened to shoot him. TS sat on the floor as usual and leaned against Brian’s legs.

Tim had been right, Raphaella thought, Totoro was a very good movie, despite the fact that it didn’t contain any violence. It was very cute though, and even Nastya had to admit it had been worth combing through the intergalactical net to find a surviving copy. For once there was no fighting, just cuddles and comfort. Raphaella basked in the closeness to her partners and if she and Tim kissed a little, that was just a natural progression of the situation and they weren’t the only ones to do it either.

The movie ended, but except for Nastya asking Aurora to turn off the TV, none of them made any move to get up. Raphaella was probably not the only one who’d slept less than she should’ve the past few weeks and the couch was very comfortable… Maybe they could just fall asleep here, all of them leaning on each other, that would be nice. She let out a yawn and snuggled closer.

“We shouldn’t fall asleep on the couch, I remember how much you complained last time,” Ashes said, practical as always. “We could make a cuddle pile on the floor instead, it’s already covered in pillows and will be much more comfortable”

There were tired hums of agreement from the others as they moved to the floor instead. Brian pushed the snack table to the side to make more room in front of the sofa and Ivy put a few more pillows where it had stood. There were lots of sleepy shuffling before everyone settled in a cuddle pile, although it was probably better described as a cuddle row. It didn’t really matter what it was called though, just that it was cosy.

At one end, Nastya lay with her head on Jonny’s stomach. Aurora had extended a few wires from the wall and Nastya clutched them to her chest. Aurora hummed gently in the background and for once, none of the other Mechanisms said anything about it. 

Tim was cuddling into Jonny’s other side, burying his face into his shoulder. Raphaella lay on her stomach beside him. She’d draped one wing over Tim’s side and the other one over Ivy, whom she was also hugging with her right arm. Marius lay close to Ivy on her other side and they held hands. TS rested its head on his stomach and was in turn used as a pillow by Brian and Ashes. They were spooning, with Ashes as the big spoon and Brian closest to Marius. 

They’d forgotten about blankets, but their combined body heat made it warm enough. Aurora dimmed the lights and conversation slowly died out as one after one fell asleep. Raphaella was content with her head rested on Ivy’s shoulder and wings draped over those closest to her. Wing hugs were the best hugs and her new, softer wings were probably very good blankets. She’d have to ask Ivy for the exact percentages tomorrow. For now, she was ready to fall asleep, surrounded by her loves.

Tonight, there was peace on the Aurora. The Mechanisms were traumatized in their own ways, but together they could slowly start to heal again. They were bad at communication, but they had all the time in the world to figure it out. Somehow this bunch of the most violent fuckers the universe had to offer had built a family together. Not a perfect one, but they fit together despite their rough edges. This was home and Raphaella wouldn’t have it any other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this! Please consider leaving kudos or a comment if you did, because those give me life.
> 
> Next chapter is probably coming soon, I've already written a first draft of almost the entire fic, but I edit a lot so we'll see how much time it takes. See you then <3
> 
> My tumblr is [@therandomravenclw](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/therandomravenclw)


	2. Interlude: Why You Should Cover Your Science

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens in Raphaella's lab while the Mechanisms are asleep in a cuddle pile, told from the perspective of an octokitten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I'm back on my bullshit, this time with an octokitten POV as a treat. Enjoy!

As the Mechanisms were fast asleep in commons, the Aurora was mostly still and silent. But the Mechanisms aren’t her only occupants, even if they’re easily the loudest ones. In a small vent, far from the common room, something moved.

Art Nouveau the octokitten (Nov for short) was crawling around in the vents over the Science Officer’s lab. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence for em to do that, e and eir fellow octokittens loved to sneak around the ship and cause chaos whenever they could. Especially if the crew wasn’t there, because e didn’t like to get shot.

There are so many small things an octokitten can do to cause a lot of fun chaos, like moving one crewmember’s things to another’s room, changing the etiquettes on food packages in the kitchen or leaving puddles of goop where a crewmate was sure to step in it. Nov also loved to bite the Mechanisms when e could since their meat was the freshest on board and also in unending supply. They weren’t very good at feeding the octokittens, with the exception of Tim and Ivy, so e thought it was only right to eat them if e was hungry.

But Nov’s favourite place to cause chaos in was the Science Officer’s lab. There were all sorts of fun chemicals there that e could put where they didn’t belong. The outcome of putting some of the more inventive poisons in the First Mate’s whiskey was always a lot of fun to watch.

E was so caught up in reminiscing over past pranks that e didn’t notice that e’d crawled right on top of the vent opening. The vent cover swung open under em and e started to fall out of the vent. Nov flailed with eir tentacles, grasping at the edges of the opening, desperately trying not to fall. Whatever e would land in if e fell would probably be very bad for em and maybe cause an explosion or two. A single tentacle managed to grip the edge, but e was startled by the vent cover hitting the floor with a loud clang and lost eir grip. 

Nov fell for a long time, because e was just a small octokitten and the Science Officer had a high ceiling in her lab so she could fly around it. It wasn’t high enough for em to worry about dying when e hit the floor, because octokittens are very squishy and has to fall from much greater heights to die, but e resigned emself to an uncomfortable landing. That’s why e was very surprised when e landed in some kind of liquid with a big splash.

That was probably not ideal. E’d seen what happened to those of eir kind that the Science Officer experimented on and most of the things in this room were dangerous. E painstakingly swam to the edge of the big tub and climbed over it with the help of eir tentacles. Nov landed on the workbench with a sad splat and looked down at emself to take in eir situation. 

The liquid was electric blue and stuck to eir body. It didn’t even go away when e tried to shake it off and it seemed like it had solidified a little, so maybe it was better described as a slime. That probably wasn’t good. E only had five lives left of eir nine, so e really hoped the slime wasn’t lethal (but knowing the Science Officer, it probably was).

Nov oozed off the table that held the tub, avoiding the various tools and equipment that littered it to eir best ability and made eir way out of the lab. The door wasn’t locked like it usually was, but Nov didn’t stop to ask emself why. It made escaping easier for em and that was eir only concern at the moment. 

E knew that there was a semi-hidden alcove a few corridors away where e could try to get the slime off without the risk of being found and killed and/or experimented on by the crew. That would be inconvenient. Maybe e could try licking off the slime?

Whatever plans Nov had didn’t matter as e began to feel queasy and a little dizzy when e was only halfway to the alcove. Something was definitely wrong with that slime. Eir eyes blacked out and e felt very weird. It was as if e was suddenly made from rubber (not _that_ far off eir usual consistency, but still) and someone was stretching em out. It was thoroughly unpleasant, but at least it wasn’t painful.

As suddenly as it hit em it was gone again. E opened eir eyes and somehow, the ship had shrunk. Or maybe e’d grown? What was for sure was that e took up almost the entire corridor, at least in breadth. Nov estimated that e was maybe a head taller than the crewmembers and at least three times as wide (e’d always been much broader than e was tall, mainly because eir head was about two thirds of eir height). The corridor was too tight to fit eir tentacles properly. 

The slime was gone and eir original colouring of green, dark blue, purple, red and white showed. There were still some kind of slime coating eir fur, but that was mostly normal for an octokitten, so Nov ignored that. The most important part was that it was clear instead of blue. Eir peculiar (and in eir own opinion quite elegant) fur was probably the reason that the Gunner decided to call em Art Nouveau in the first place and e didn’t want to lose it to some stupid slime. 

The small collar with eir name and pronouns had sadly torn apart when e grew, but that didn’t concern em very much, e had bigger problems. This growing/transformation stuff had left em _very_ hungry. There was no food down here, but maybe e could find some in the crew’s living quarters? If e couldn’t find any there e could head to the kitchen instead, eir new size might make em less vulnerable to gunshot wounds. Maybe. At least e could wreak some havoc on the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you'd like to know what Art Nouveau looks like, you can check out [this picture](https://therandomravenclw.tumblr.com/post/640042235482849281/hello-tumblr-have-some-octokittens-from-left-to). Yes, I made up the entire premise of this fic because I thought the size of my crochetchanisms compared to the size of my first crochet octokitten child was funny. Another fun fact, this was the first part of this fic I wrote.
> 
> If you enjoyed, please consider leaving kudos or a comment to make my day!


	3. Discovery, Death and Some Planning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Mechanisms are woken up by some weird noises and goes to investigate. They didn't exactly expect to find a giant octokitten, but now they need to figure out what happened and how to deal with it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! I'm very proud of this chapter and I'll hope you'll enjoy reading it just as much as I did writing it. It's one of those chapters where I laughed at my own jokes while rereading my first draft to start editing (I edit a LOT so that's why writing takes so long for me)
> 
> That being said, there's some death in this chapter, not graphic at all, but if being eaten by an octokitten disturbs you can skip from "As if on cue..." to "That's very interesting!"
> 
> Enjoy!

The Mechanisms woke up all at once, startled by a loud CLANG coming from the lower levels. Of course, the Toy Soldier was never asleep to begin with, but it was jolly good at pretending, so the difference didn’t really matter.

“Wha- whas’ happening?” Tim yawned, before snuggling closer into Jonny’s side. He looked very cute and comfortable to Raphaella, so she squeezed him a little with the wing he used as a blanket. He made a happy sound in response.

“No idea,” Ashes said. “All of us are here, right?”

Raphaella slowly sat up and did a quick headcount. All of them lay in the same positions they’d fallen asleep in the night before and looked reluctant to be awake, at least judging by the yawns and sleepy cuddles. “Everyone’s here”

There was another loud clanging noise, this time closer to them. “Should we go and find out what it is? There shouldn’t be anyone else aboard.” Ashes untangled themself from Brian and sat up.

“We could do that,” Jonny said. “There might even be some fun violence.” He gently pushed Tim away, ignoring his protests, and sat up to check his gun. Why Jonny always slept with his gun was a mystery to Raphaella, and it would probably remain so. She was pretty sure he’d shoot her if she asked.

“Shouldn’t we check with Aurora first?” Brian asked. “If it’s nothing important we could just stay here for a while” Aurora let out a hiss of steam from a small vent close to the ceiling and the ever-present whirring inside her walls grew more high-pitched. 

“She’s just laughing at us,” Nastya replied. “So whatever it is, I don’t think she will tell us”

Another CLANG echoed through the ship and the Mechanisms fell silent and still for a moment. Raphaella listened for any other unusual sounds, but couldn’t hear any.

“Then we better go see what it is,” Ashes said, breaking the sudden silence. “Come on” They stood up and the rest of the crew reluctantly followed their lead. It was probably a good idea to check out whatever it was, despite how nice it would be to keep cuddling instead. 

Most of them weren’t fully awake yet, but they’d lived (and died) through worse things than examining weird noises while sleepy. Besides, the excitement of an unknown probably-impostor and the promise of some violence was enough to ensure they’d wake up eventually.

The group sneaked through Aurora’s corridors towards the source of the clanging noise and soon enough the sounds were coming from right around the corner. There were more clanging, less loud this time, but also some wet thuds and a general oozing sound. They stopped for a moment, steeling themselves, until Marius looked around the corner and immediately started to laugh. Loudly.

“What is it?” Jonny hissed from the back of the group. Raphaella didn’t know why he still tried to keep his voice down, given that whatever was behind that corner must’ve heard Marius’ laughter by now.

“It’s a fucking octokitten,” Marius managed to get out between laughs. “Come see for yourselves, it’s gigantic. I didn’t know they grew this big, has someone fed them anything weird recently?”

The rest of the group stepped out from behind the corner and Raphaella managed to get a look from behind Ivy. There was indeed an enormous octokitten in the middle of the corridor, holding a metal pipe in one of the tentacles the furthest from them. That was probably the source of the clanging noises then. It was multi-coloured and taller than all of them, even Brian, as well as broad enough to block off the entire corridor. 

It seemed like the octokitten had been heading in the other direction, but with confused mrrp sound, it turned its head towards them. Not the body, just the head, like an owl. She should investigate how far they could turn their heads sometime. That would be interesting! What if they had no front or back of their bodies, just whatever direction the head faced? It sure looked like it worked that way. That half-formed hypothesis was quickly interrupted by a devastated cry from Tim.

“Nooo, Nov, what happened to you?” He turned towards the crew and if his eyes hadn’t been expressionless metal, Raphaella was sure they would’ve looked heartbroken. “E was just a normal-sized octokitten when I saw em last, I think it was yesterday. Did you do anything to em?” 

“So this is one of yours then,” Jonny said, his voice thick with contempt. He’d never liked the octokittens much. Raphaella and Ivy had done a study a few decades ago and concluded that Jonny had an 85% chance of shooting any octokitten he saw on sight, and sure enough, his hand was already on the gun strapped to his waist, probably since the moment he saw it was an octokitten. That was probably not the best course of action, given Tim’s apparent affection for em, but she wasn’t going to comment on it.

“Yes!” Tim beamed at Jonny like a proud parent and Jonny slowly moved his hand away from the gun. He always denied being soft, but usually didn’t shoot things he’d otherwise shoot if he knew that one of his partners cared about it (although he’d never admit that was the case). Tim’s octokittens were off limits for all of them. “This is Art Nouveau, e’s very smart and likes to play pranks!” 

Tim turned around again to address the octokitten. “Aren’t you a smart kitty Nov? Yes you are!” Nov made a chirping sound in reply that could probably be interpreted as a happy one. Octokitten language wasn’t exactly intuitive, so it could just as well be a threat.

“Not to interrupt you dear,” Ashes said. “But shouldn’t we figure out what happened to em instead? I’m sure e’s a very good octokitten, but we should consider what to do with em. We can’t have a giant octokitten roaming the ship unchecked, regardless of how much you like em.”

“I think I can help with that,” Raphaella said, thinking out loud. “Before crew night I was working on…” she trailed off. She hadn’t covered the Science Liquid before leaving the lab. Oh no. It was supposed to shrink things but what if it altered size in the other direction? That would be very exciting to research, but the others would probably not take too kindly to her science escaping again. There was a reason the lab door was locked after all. Shit. She hadn’t done that either, had she?

“Go on,” Ashes said.

“I just realised…” she started, avoiding eye contact. “I may or may not have caused this to happen. Oops?”

Several people spoke up at once. She didn’t catch everything, but Tim said something about ‘poor defenceless octokittens’ and how she’d promised not to experiment on his favourites, Jonny was shouting something about why she had to make those fuckers even more annoying while Marius was still laughing in the background. Brian just let out a deep sigh.

Raphaella held up her hands in front of her and took a step back. “Look it was a mistake, alright? I was just trying to make a liquid that would shrink people if you spray them with it, I thought it’d be fun for the next time we go planetside. But then someone-” she aimed a pointed look at Marius “-distracted me so I forgot to cover the Science Liquid and lock the door. It could happen to anyone!”

The others quieted down during her explanation and there was some silence, soon broken by Brian. “I’m sorry Raph, I don’t think anyone else on this ship does mad Science that escapes the lab. We love you for it though.”

“Oh”

“Didn’t you say it was a shrinking solution?” Marius asked. “Because this octokittens is like, the opposite of tiny. And I think e’s angry too”

“On that note,” Nastya said from a vent in the ceiling. Nobody had noticed how or when she got up there, but Nastya was sneaky like that sometimes. “I’m leaving you to deal with this. Aurora wanted some help with a thing, so I have to go. Good luck.”

“Nastya get back here!” Jonny shouted at her. “You can’t just get out of helping us with this, it’s a shit excuse and I know you made it up.” It was too late though, Nastya had already retreated down the vent.

“Aurora, stop her!” 

Aurora didn’t listen to Jonny. She extended a screen from the wall instead, only displaying “:3”. She could talk to them out loud of course, but sometimes she preferred using the screens, mostly to be annoying.

“Nastya was probably right to leave,” Ivy said. “Based on the previous behaviour of this specific octokitten and all octokittens in general, I calculate an 87.2% chance that Nov will severely harm or kill one of us in the next few minutes if we keep standing around and talking.”

As if on cue, Nov surged forward and took a big bite out of Marius’ torso. E’d been slowly sneaking towards them while they were distracted by Nastya’s exit and Marius stood closest to em. The rest of the crew instinctively backed away from the bloody scene in front of them. Being eaten wasn’t exactly a pleasant death.

“Ow fuck, why does it always have to be me? I swear, these fuckers have something agai-” Marius never got to finish the sentence because Nov took another bite, leaving him dead.

“Sorry Tim-” Jonny said, a look of determination on his face. “-but this octokitten is going to die.” With that he charged at Nov, ignoring the others’ cries of ‘Jonny, no’ and variations thereof. He fired a few shots into the mass of slime and fur, trying to hit eir weak points. 

Jonny had some weird protective instincts like that. He would take revenge on anyone that harmed his crew as long as it wasn’t one of them who did it. Then he just laughed at whoever had died that time. The shots he fired at Nov didn’t seem to inconvenience em too much though, e just raised a tentacle and slapped Jonny’s face with a wet thud.

“Ew, what is this shit?” Jonny’s face was now covered in an electric blue slime that definitely hadn’t been on the octokitten before and he tried to wipe it off with his shirtsleeve. Maybe e’d produced some when e touched him? Jonny started to sway a little. “Bad news, I think it’s venomous” He fell to the floor, presumably dead. Nov just kept munching on Marius’ corpse.

“That’s very interesting,” Raphaella exclaimed. “I had no idea it could do that, now if I only took some samples I could…” 

She started fiddling with one of the test vials she always carried for emergency sampling reasons, but was stopped and dragged behind the corner by Brian. “I love you very much, but this is not the time for Science. We need to make a plan to get rid of em before e kills anyone else and you know the most about what happened to em, so if we’re going to figure out how to fix it you can’t die from sample-taking, at least not right now.”

“Yeah,” Tim added. “Didn’t you say it was supposed to shrink things?”

“People, not things, but essentially yes. It was supposed to shrink them, but the size-altering must’ve worked in the other direction. I’m sure I can get it right if I just tweak it a little!” The longer she spoke, the more her wings fluttered behind her. This would be so exciting! There were already theories running through her mind at lightning speed and new ideas for how to make the Science Liquid work as it was supposed to. 

“You need to cover the Science first, because we don’t want to deal with more gigantic octokittens,” Ashes said firmly. “What should we do with this one though?”

“We’re not killing em,” Tim said, crossing his arms. “E’s one of my favourites and if Raph can reverse the effects we shouldn’t kill em in vain. You’ll even get some science out of it!” 

Raphaella nodded, it was a very good argument. She really needed some samples of that venom and it would be interesting to see if the shrinking solution could reverse the effects if she got it to work.

Seeing that Raphaella agreed with him, Tim turned to Ivy. “You like the octokittens too, don’t you agree that e doesn’t deserve to die?”

“Since e has just eaten there’s only a 5% chance e will kill someone else in the next 24 hours if we contain em, so I’m in if we can stop em from roaming freely.”

“There’s a cage that should be able to hold em in storage bay three, from that time Jonny brought a horse on board,” Ashes said. “We only need to lure em there and put em in the cage without touching em. I don’t know about you, but I’m not planning on dying from toxic slime today.”

“I Believe That Brian And I Will Not Be Affected By The Slime Because We Are Not Made From Flesh!” the Toy Soldier said in its usual chipper voice.

“That’s probably true,” Brian said. “We could wait by the cage and put em inside if you lure em there.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Ashes said. “Raph goes to the lab and covers the Science, TS and Brian wait in the storage bay, which leaves luring Nov there to me, Ivy and Tim. Everyone fine with that plan?”

There was a chorus of yes and the Toy Soldier saluted them. 

“Wait,” Ivy said. “Before you go Brian, may I climb your shoulders so I can ask Nastya to watch the others until they regenerate?”

“Sure, just make it quick”

Brian crouched down to let Ivy position herself on his shoulders, then stood up. Ivy removed the vent cover and shouted into the vent. “Nastya, I know you can hear me. Could you stay here and tell Jonny and Marius that they can find us in storage bay three when they wake up?”

There was no answer, but Brian let Ivy down and the crew parted ways to do their tasks. It wasn’t exactly like a heist, but it was the closest thing they’d had in ages and they were all excited. It was after all incredibly easy to become bored in space, even when you’re stuck with the most chaotic crew imaginable. This would be fun!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! As usual, please consider leaving kudos or a comment if you enjoyed, I love hearing from you!
> 
> Stay tuned for the last chapter, but it will probably take some time because it's shaping up to be a long one and I'm barely halfway through the first draft. Once again, thank you for reading!


	4. Fire, Slime and Some Bones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plan is set into motion with some unexpected hitches

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to split this chapter into two parts because it became so long! But I'm very happy with it and I hope you'll like it too <3 I've also changed the tags a bit because these last two chapters ended up changing the story a bit and now the tags reflect that better
> 
> Content warnings: some blood and mentions of dead bodies (still not graphic), mechs-typical disregard for human life and discussion of a long-dead horse

Both Tim and Ivy had gone somewhere else when the crew split up, so Ashes was left alone with Nov. They trusted that the others would be back soon, but in the meantime they should probably make a plan of their own for how to move the giant murderous octokitten.

They didn’t need to think for long because the solution was obvious: fire. Ashes was definitely a pyromaniac, they didn’t deny that, but fire was often a very good solution to most problems, including this one. It was pretty logic: Nov wouldn’t like being set on fire, which meant that e’d move away from fire. So if Ashes could hold some fire behind em e’d move towards storage bay three. Simple.

With that out of the way, they only needed something portable to set on fire. If they remembered right they’d stashed some torches in a cupboard not far from here a while ago. Sometimes Aurora’s corridors changed, but they’d made sure to stash torches, gasoline and other flammables all over the ship so that wasn’t a problem. You never know when you need some fire, as evidenced by this situation.

The cupboard was only about 30 metres away, so it didn’t take long before Ashes stood behind the corner again, ready to light the first torch. They’d grabbed maybe ten in total and carried most of them in a bag slung over their shoulder. There had also been a small flamethrower in the cupboard, which they’d brought as a backup plan. Their lighter lit up with a quiet click and they smiled slightly, allowing themself a moment to stare into the small flame before lighting two torches, one for each hand.

Arson never got old. The flickering flames were just as captivating now as they’d been when Ashes was a child so many millennia ago. They could never tire of way the flames danced, a tiny pinprick of heat in the cold universe that could so easily spread into an inferno and consume everything around it. 

Fire was comforting, yet with that sharp edge of danger, a hint at the destruction it could bring and the beauty of it caught Ashes off guard every single time. It wasn’t hard to understand why they chose fire every time it was an option, as well as a few times it wasn’t. The flames had been a constant during their entire long life, yet they were never exactly the same.

Torches now lit, Ashes stepped around the corner to face Nov. The floor was slick with blood from both Marius and Jonny, since e’d apparently decided that both of them made for a good snack. Ashes pointedly looked away from their corpses on the floor. They were of course not unused to seeing their partners in various states of death, but it was still unpleasant and half-eaten people looked absolutely disgusting. 

“Hey there asshole,” they called out, hoping to shift Nov’s attention to the torches. “I’m gonna set you on fire if you don’t start moving, so I suggest you leave Marius and Jonny alone” 

They knew that octokittens probably didn’t understand human language, but it felt a lot better to shout a little at em. It didn’t matter much if Nov understood or not, because the sound made em look up at Ashes. E visibly recoiled at the sight of fire and Ashes grinned. Hopefully this would work then. They took another careful step forward, making sure to stay out of the tentacles’ range and waved the torches in something they hoped e would perceive as a threatening manner.

“Come on, move you idiot”

Slowly, Nov started to back away from Ashes. They took another step forward, narrowly avoiding Jonny’s arm and made a jabbing motion with one of the torches towards Nov. E let out a squeak and started to move at a quicker pace, but still pretty slow. They moved closer yet another time, causing Nov to turn eir head back around and moved away from them even faster. The chase was on.

A metallic voice rang out from the ceiling. “I took the liberty to rearrange my corridors a little and close some doors. The side corridors on the way to storage bay three are blocked off now, so you won’t have to worry about em taking a wrong turn”

“Thanks ‘Rora,” they answered. They hadn’t even thought about Nov taking a wrong turn, but luckily they lived on a sentient spaceship that could remember things like that for them. Ashes kept driving the giant octokitten forwards at a normal walking pace, because apparently Nov couldn’t be bothered to move faster than that, even under the threat of fire. 

It went on like that for a while, with Ashes walking behind Nov, occasionally waving the torches a little or taunting em, until they got bored about halfway to storage bay three. They’d thought that this would be at least a little bit more exciting, but walking behind an octokitten with some torches turned out to be pretty boring after the initial few minutes. E should at least have the courtesy to move a little faster.

Well, they could probably make em move faster if they made the threat clearer. Hopefully Tim wouldn’t mind if his octokitten got a few burn marks. They threw one of the torches towards Nov’s back, hoping that some burnt fur would make em hurry up a bit. It quickly sizzled out, leaving no mark. Fuck, they’d forgotten about that damn slime. Had Raphaella accidentally made a fire-proof octokitten? In that case they were royally screwed.

They wouldn’t panic over this though, not even as Nov stopped and turned eir head to face them again. They waved their remaining torch in front of them, but Nov didn’t move away from it. E’d probably realised that the torches wouldn’t do anything then. Luckily, Ashes had brought a plan B. 

In a smooth movement, they got out the small flamethrower and lit it. The corridor filled with fire in an instant and the flickering flames danced, casting moving shadows along the walls. The hues shifted from blue to yellow and it was beautiful. The heat would be too much for most people, but Ashes was used to it. 

They weren’t actually sure if this would work, but hopefully Nov wasn’t smart enough to realise e was fire-proof, just that the torches wouldn’t do anything. Hopefully e’d shy away from the flamethrower, it should look scarier to em than the torches. 

They weren’t that lucky though. Sure, Nov shied away from the fire at first, but then e carefully reached out a tentacle towards it. The tentacle hissed as the fire made contact with the slime, but e seemed to be unharmed by it. For a tense second, they stared at each other, both unsure of what would happen now. Apparently octokittens were smarter than Ashes had given them credit for. There goes that plan, they thought and decided to retreat. 

They weren’t sure if Nov would go after them now that e knew they couldn’t harm em with fire, but they weren’t going to take any risks right now. Dying wasn’t a problem, but Nov would probably eat them just like e’d done with Marius and Jonny and they really liked this vest. Jonny made it for them once and they’d worn it for crew night, it would be such a shame if it got destroyed.

Ashes stepped around a convenient corner (Had it been there before? Maybe Aurora made a new corner for them to hide behind, but it could just as well be the Narrative Convenience causing it to appear) and turned off the flamethrower. There were no sounds of Nov moving from behind the corner, so it was probably safe to wait here for now. Tim and Ivy should show up soon and they could lure Nov the rest of the way. Ashes had done their part.

* * *

Raphaella ran through Aurora’s winding corridors towards her lab, boots clanging on the metal floor. Honestly, she wasn’t too upset about this whole situation, but she wanted to see if there’d been any damage to the lab. It was annoying that her formula had been so wrong it did the opposite thing of what she wanted it to, but it was far from finished when she left for crew night so it wasn’t that bad. Besides, she would probably have a fun time figuring out what went wrong and trying to fix it. 

Maybe she should try to make it less venomous this time too. Perhaps that was only a side effect of the octokittens’ weird genetics and how they were prone to mutations, but she could easily test that. She always kept some frozen human test subjects in her lab and this would be a good use of them. It wouldn’t be as fun to shrink people if they could kill you by touch. 

Anyways, that would be a problem for later. Right now she needed to make sure that none of her other Science had escaped and cover up the Science Liquid. She hoped that Nov hadn’t destroyed too much of her lab before leaving, because it was always a pain to clean up after her more volatile experiments exploded and so much Science was always lost in the process. At least she and Nastya built some cleaning sproombas (space roombas) for dangerous substances a decade or so ago, so she wouldn’t have to do the cleaning herself.

She skidded to a halt maybe 40 metres from the lab door. There was a big puddle of electric blue goo taking up the entire corridor in front of her and it looked a lot like the slime that killed Jonny. There was also a normal-octokitten-sized trail of goo leading to the puddle from the lab. This was probably where the octokitten grew to eir current size then. Hopefully that meant her lab wasn’t destroyed.

Raphaella took out an emergency test vial and scooped up some of the slime, careful not to touch it in case it would kill her too. She needed a way to get past the puddle without touching it though… Oh right, she could just fly over. It was surprisingly easy to forget she could do that considering she’d had wings for her entire life (if you didn’t count those three years she usually avoided thinking about). 

The corridor was almost too narrow for her wings to fit properly since these were slightly larger than her usual ones, but Raphaella managed to land safely on the other side of the goo puddle. She walked a few metres before taking another sample, this time from the trail. The science would be better if she could investigate whether the goo’s properties changed when the victim grew. 

Raphaella peered inside the door to the lab and sighed in relief. It wasn’t overrun with giant octokittens and the only visible change from when she left was the trail of blue slime leading from the tub of Science Liquid to the door. Looking closer, she could also see a vent cover on the floor close to the workbench containing the Science Liquid. That must’ve been how Nov came in contact with her Science then. She’d have to reinforce the vent covers or put locks on them later to avoid future accidents like this. 

Before she got distracted by that thought, she should to do what she came here for though. Raphaella looked around the lab for something to cover the science with and found some large metal sheets leaned against a wall. Perfect. The edges were rough and pretty sharp, but she carried one over to the tub of shimmering blue Science Liquid and put the metal sheet on top. Nothing else would fall into her Science before she was done with it. 

The sproombas were stacked in a corner (they were magnetic to prevent the small tower from falling over, she was very proud of that idea) and Raphaella removed the top five from the stack, narrowly avoiding the sharp metal spikes welded to their sides. Jonny and Tim had convinced her to add them for fun and she had to agree, it was very fun to see her crewmates’ reactions to getting stabbed in the ankles by a sproomba. 

The sproombas were adorable and they even cleaned up the blood by themselves! That was more than what could be said about the other Mechanisms who almost never cleaned up after affectionately stabbing someone. 

She turned the sproombas on and released them towards the goo, letting out a yelp when one of them stabbed her ankle before following the others. A quick glance showed that it had barely drawn blood. She smiled, the sproombas acted almost like affectionate pets sometimes. They were loving with a taste for blood, just like the octokittens. 

Right, the octokittens. She could try to alter her Science Liquid now, but that would take a lot of time. Raphaella would rather see if her partners managed to catch Nov and maybe get some samples from em before she started. 

Maybe she should hang out with the others for a little longer before she returned to the Science too. Yesterday had been lovely and she should probably eat something more substantial than movie snacks before returning to her Science. There was also the fact that she’d barely seen her partners in the weeks she’d been Science-ing so yeah, she should probably go be social first.

Having decided on that, Raphaella picked up some test vials from a shelf by the door to replace the emergency ones she’d used. She made sure to actually lock the door behind her this time and started walking in the direction of storage bay three. The sproombas had already cleaned up a lot of the goo trail and she smiled softly at them before turning down another corridor and out of their sight.

* * *

“Tim, are you also searching for octokitten food?” Ivy asked. Both of them were running in the same direction so it was likely Tim had come up with the same idea as her for how to lure Nov to the cage. 

“Yes, I put aside some reconstituted meat in the kitchen for the octokittens a while ago and I thought that might work. Did you also plan on feeding em?”

“Presenting them with food is the most reliable way of making octokittens do what I want”

“I know, it seems like only my love for them isn’t enough these days” Tim’s voice was very dramatic and he even clutched a hand to his chest, but the tone was a little off. It wasn’t much, but enough for Ivy to know that he wasn’t as okay as he seemed. 

It probably had something to do with the uncertain fate of one of his favourite octokittens. She could easily recall Tim telling her about Nov on many occasions and according to her brain, e was the third most talked about octokitten. Despite that, she hadn’t actually met em until today. She considered asking him about it, but Tim kept talking before she even got the chance.

“Do you have any idea what Ashes will do? I don’t think they left.” That was actually a good question and Ivy had to think for a short while before answering.

“I don’t know, but they will probably come up with something.” She paused slightly “There’s a 72% chance that whatever it is will involve fire.”

Tim laughed “That does sound like their style”

Ivy was still concerned about him though. With millennia of experience she could easily see through the façades her partners put up when they tried to conceal their feelings, especially since she could cross-reference every single detail of their facial expressions with the vast database of her memory. Tim had that wrinkle in his forehead that only showed up when he worried and his laugh wasn’t as carefree as usual. Considering how much he cared about Nov, it wasn’t hard to tell why. 

“Are you okay?” she asked softly.

“I think so.” He ran a hand through his hair, a nervous habit from what Ivy could tell. “It’s just that I worry. I know we all agreed not to kill em, even though there would be good reason for it considering e killed Marius and Jonny, but I just worry that someone will harm em anyways. I mean, you said Ashes would probably use fire and there’s no telling what Jonny will do once he wakes up.”

Tim was growing more frantic and frustrated the longer he spoke. “And what if Raphaella can’t turn em back? She would probably keep em to do some experiments for a while, but what happens when she tires of em? E can’t exactly live in a cage forever and I just know we’ll forget to bring em food after a while!”

He stopped and seemed to almost deflate. There was a slight pause, and when he continued to talk it was in a much quieter manner. “Sorry, this was stupid. Just ignore it, I’m fine and I shouldn’t care this much about a fucking octokitten. I have so many others, this one shouldn’t matter.”

“It’s not stupid to care Tim,” Ivy said, weighing her words carefully. This was clearly more of an issue than she’d expected, but it made sense, what with the way he’d talked about Nov before. 

“You can’t control what you feel and it’s clear that this particular octokitten means a lot to you. For what it’s worth, I don’t think the others will harm Nov. You know that your octokittens are off limits, right? Let’s focus on capturing em and we can worry about the rest later, although I don’t think we’ll need to. There’s a 99% chance that Raphaella will be able to fix it. E will be back to normal in an instant.”

“Thank you Ivy” He gave her a small smile. “I don’t think I’ll stop worrying, but it’s at least reassuring to know the chances are on our side. Let’s get that meat so we can help Ashes.”

He held out a hand to her and she took it, giving him a small and comforting squeeze. The kitchen wasn’t far from here and the sooner they got that meat the sooner they could help Nov. Tim would be fine.

* * *

Meanwhile, Brian and the Toy Soldier had arrived in storage bay three. The metal doors slid open with a hiss and they walked inside. The room was filled to the brim with big wooden crates, but Brian could see a cage in the corner, half-hidden behind some of them. It would be more than big enough to fit Nov.

“What Do We Do Now,” the Toy Soldier asked.

Brian took another look around the room and removed a few strands of wire hair that had fallen into his face while they were walking, wincing slightly at the clang of metal on metal. No matter how many years had passed, he could never quite get used to it. “I think we should start with opening the cage. We want to be as prepared as possible when they get here.”

“That Sounds Like A Spiffing Idea!”

He smiled at its enthusiasm and started to walk over to the cage. He’d found that its cheerfulness spread and he could always count on TS cheering him up if he had a bad day. Maybe he’d actually need that right now, because when he arrived at the cage he saw that the door was locked with a big padlock and there was no key in sight. He sighed and turned to TS.

“It’s locked”

“Just Destroy The Lock”

“Ah, I forgot about that option. It looks pretty sturdy, do you think I can rip it apart?” One of the better things with having a metal body was that he was a lot stronger than the average human and he didn’t even have to exercise. This meant that most padlocks weren’t much of a hindrance to him as he could simply rip them apart.

“I Have No Idea, Try It”

He gripped the padlock and pulled as hard as he could, but it didn’t budge. This must be one of the Brian-safe locks then. That actually made sense, considering Jonny had kept his horse in there after smuggling it aboard. There had been lots of arguing about that horse, because the rest of them didn’t want a horse on the Aurora and if there had to be one, Jonny should at least give it a better name than _that_. So it made sense that Jonny didn’t want Brian to be able to let it out.

“Apparently this is one of the sturdier ones.” He paused, thinking over their options. Knowing Jonny, the key was probably nowhere to be found so they needed to open the lock with other means. The lock picks he usually kept in the hidden compartment in his arm were still in his room, waiting to be cleaned, but it did give him an idea. “Hold on, I’m going to try something”

With a smooth hand motion, the tip of his left index finger opened to reveal a small gadget.

“What Is That?”

“It’s a tiny laser cutter. I don’t know how well it works yet because it’s pretty new, but I should be able to cut open the lock.” With that he turned it on and the blue beam swiftly cut through the lock, causing it to fall to the floor with a clatter. Brian removed the part still stuck in the door and opened it. 

In favour of concentrating on the lock, neither of them had looked inside the cage. This proved to be a mistake. The first thing Brian saw when he opened the door was a horse skeleton laying on the floor. The bones weren’t laying in the right order, mostly just in a haphazard pile actually, but it was still clear that it had once been a horse.

“Goddammit Jonny, I’m going to kill you as soon as you get here,” he muttered to himself. 

“Is The Skeleton Not Supposed To Be There?” TS asked, stepping inside to get a closer look at the bones.

“No, when that damn horse died, Jonny _said_ he would take care of it. Which I assumed meant disposing of the body and skeleton. Who knows what diseases and smells could’ve come from the carcass while it rotted.”

“Actually, There Is No Trace Of The Meat Here, Just Bone. If He Just Left It Here To Rot There Would Be At Least Something Left. These Are Very Good Bones Though” It held up one of the bones (maybe a rib?) to show him. Brian couldn’t say he was an expert on bone quality, but if TS said the bones were good they probably were. Still, it _was_ weird that there were only bones left, it wasn’t even that long ago the whole horse thing happened, maybe a century or two at most. At once, Brian was struck with a horrible thought.

“TS,” he said, voice filled with dread. “Do you think Jonny ate the horse?”

“Maybe.” It continued to appraise the bones, seemingly unbothered by the prospect of Jonny eating an entire horse raw. He should probably have expected that. “Do You Think He Would Mind If I Took Some Of These?”

“I don’t think so? I can’t really see what use he would have for them” He paused, uncertain of what to say until a thought struck him. “Wait, weren’t you somewhere else when the horse thing happened?”

“I Think So! Maybe You Could Tell Me The Story While We Wait” It had picked out a pile of bones and stood up, carrying them out of the cage.

Brian shrugged. “Sure, it’s not like we have anything better to do. It all started when we went down to this desert planet …” And so Brian started to tell the story of how Jonny managed to acquire a horse and sneak it onto the Aurora, with all its many twists and turns. It was a pleasant way to pass the time while they waited and TS was excellent company as usual.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, please consider leaving kudos or a comment to make my entire day!
> 
> I want to start off by apologising about the horse. It was not planned, but it's here now and there will be even more cursed hoese content in the next chapter. It was a fun chapter to write though, despite the fact that I barely had any idea how to write most of the characters, but I think I figured it out. You should also know that writing this gave me so many Tim/Ivy feelings I never expected to have.
> 
> Once again, thank you for reading and stay tuned for the hopefully thrilling conclusion!


	5. Idiocy, Jonny's Horse and a Happy Ending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parts of the crew keeps dealing with Nov, while others wake up from death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while, but I'm back with the last chapter (of story at least, but more about that later)! I hope you liked the cursed horse content from last chapter, because my brain has been stuck on Jonny's horse and now this happened. I'm sorry. Anyways, enjoy the thrilling conclusion!
> 
> Content warnings: Technically suicide (immortal charachter willingly does a thing they know they will die from, pretty mechs-typical but I thought I'd say it anyways), non-graphic blood and injury (the aftermath of becoming octokitten food), past poisoning (not graphic either). I think that's all, please tell me if I should add something (this goes for all chapters btw)

Ashes had been waiting for Tim and Ivy to show up for almost ten minutes now, and they could finally hear them from further down the corridor. The crew of the Aurora was many things, but subtle and quiet was not one of them. Nov had stayed behind the corner, apparently content to do nothing (Ashes had entertained themselves with their lighter because waiting is boring).

“-sure this is the right way”

“Yes I am. Remind me again, whose brain did Aurora download the map to? That’s right, it’s mine and I know the way”

“I’m still not sure you didn’t just make up the brain map.”

“You’ll see I’m right in a minute or two, e’s right around the corner”

“I hope so, this is heavy”

“I thought you were stronger than that, I’ll have to adjust my algorithms to reflect that in the future.”

“You wound me love. Just because I don’t carry books around all day…” Tim’s voice trailed off, which probably meant that he and Ivy were close enough to see Nov. Ashes decided to step out from behind the corner and announce themself. 

They were met by the sight of Tim and Ivy on the other side of Nov, carrying a frankly disturbing amount of meat. That probably meant they were going to lure em to the storage bay with food. That was actually a good plan, why hadn’t they thought of that themself? Given the state of Jonny’s and Marius’ corpses when they came back with the fire, e was very hungry.

“Hello Ashes,” Ivy said. “I see you made some progress, why did you stop?”

“E found out e’s fireproof.” 

“I see,” Ivy replied.

“Don’t worry Tim, I didn’t try to set em on fire and e’s unharmed,” they quickly added, seeing the look on his face. It was technically not a lie since they hadn’t actually tried to burn em to death, just a small wound to make em realise the danger and move faster. 

“If you say so” He looked relieved.

“It take it your plan is feeding em?”

“Yes it is.” Tim looked a lot happier when he was no longer thinking about his beloved octokitten burning to death. “We brought some reconstituted meat from the kitchen, that’s what I usually feed octokittens. Are we waiting for something or should I start now?”

“The sooner we get this over with the better,” Ivy said and turned to Tim. “Hand me some of that meat, it will be easier for you.”

It was hard for Ashes to see what happened next, considering there was a giant octokitten in between them, but it looked like Tim handed over most of his meat and moved a little closer to Nov. E’d seemed mostly uninterested while they talked but now e turned towards Tim and let out a chirping noise. Maybe e sensed that e would get food.

He threw a small chunk of meat towards eir mouth and judging by the way e moved eir head, it was swiftly caught and swallowed. Tim took a few steps back and held up another chunk of meat. Then he started talking to em in that high-pitched voice he only used for the octokittens. Ashes found the voice extremely cute, but that was a secret they’d bring to the grave (metaphorically of course, since they would never die for real).

“Come on kitty, I have some more food for you if you just come a little closer. Come on Nov, don’t you want some tasty reconstituted meat?” 

Nov sniffed the air but e didn’t move. Ashes couldn’t help but to make a comment. “Y’know Tim, maybe it would help if you didn’t advertise the fact that it’s second hand meat”

“Shut up, you’re not helping,” he grumbled. “It’s not like octokittens actually understand our language.”

“Fair enough, but I reserve the right to laugh at you if it doesn’t work.”

“It would work better if you didn’t distract me.” 

“You may have a point there, keep doing the thing”

Tim kept trying to tempt Nov and after some more coaxing it actually worked. The giant octokitten slowly started to move forward.

“What a good kitty you are Nov! Yes, you’re the best! Do you want some more meat? Come here and I’ll give you some more!” Tim threw em some meat and took a few steps backwards, making sure to stay out of range from the tentacles.

Slowly, the group moved forwards through the corridor. Nov had picked up the pace a little, but e still moved slower than a normal walking pace. Tim continued to praise em, occasionally tossing em more meat. Honestly, Ashes thought it would’ve been very boring to watch if it hadn’t been for the fact that Tim was very cute when he was excited about something (in this case the giant murderous octokitten that killed two of their partners, but they weren’t really in a place to judge him considering their fires had killed other Mechanisms many times).

After a while of this, Tim made a horribly stupid mistake. Instead of steadily moving backwards and staying out of range from the murder tentacles, Tim walked towards Nov and reached out a hand towards em. It looked almost like he was trying to pet the octokitten that produced a lethal slime when touched, but surely he wasn’t that stupid. Or wait, maybe he was, at least when it concerned the octokittens. Good thing he was immortal.

“Tim no,” Ivy said firmly. She’d clearly had the same idea as them. “Get back here right now, you will die”

Tim gave her the finger, then pet Nov while calling em a ‘good kitty’. 

“You fucking dumbass,” they called out to him.

“Worth it.” Tim took a step to the side to flash a grin at them. At least he was happy with his bad decision. He started to sway slightly. “Damn, this slime works faster than I thought it would”

With those words Tim died. Ashes sighed and shook their head.

“Looks like it’s only us left then,” they said. “Can you keep doing the meat thing before e decides to eat Tim instead?”

“Of course I can.” Ivy threw a small chunk of meat at Nov to gain eir attention and took a few steps back, already holding out another piece. “Do we just leave him here?”

“He’ll be covered in death slime when Nov has moved over him, so yeah. My gloves are somewhere else and I don’t feel like dying today.”

Nov started to move towards Ivy, crawling over Tim’s corpse in the process. Luckily, e seemed to prefer the meat Ivy gave em to eating Tim. Or maybe e just liked Tim enough not to eat him, which was also a possibility. 

It didn’t make much of a difference to them though, the important part was that they were on their way to storage bay three again and that Tim wouldn’t be sad because his octokitten ate him. Ivy seemed to know what she was doing and Nov followed her, so there was nothing Ashes could do besides keeping her company.

* * *

Jonny’s head was still spinning when he came alive with a groan. It was always disorientating to wake up from death, regardless of how many times you did it, and it was even more disorientating when the death was caused by some kind of poison. His body never bothered to clear away all the toxins before dragging him back to consciousness, so he woke up to a killer headache and only the smallest awareness of his surroundings. It usually cleared up pretty fast, but it was still annoying as hell.

The first thing that registered was that lingering pain of already healed wounds, all over his body. Wait, when did that happen? It certainly didn’t fit with the poison-headache. How did he even die? The last thing he remembered was crew night… oh right. That fucking octokitten with its stupid venomous tentacles. Ugh, the others would never let him live this down.

Mind clear again, he decided to sit up and survey the situation. The sight he was met with was a lot bloodier than he’d expected. Marius had been half-eaten when Jonny last saw him, but surely he couldn’t contain that much blood. At least he looked better now. Marius wasn’t awake yet, but the big holes in his torso looked to have healed up (sadly, his shirt hadn’t), at least from what Jonny could see from his position on the floor. 

There was still a lot of blood though. Wait. He looked down on his own torso and saw that his shirt was ripped apart and covered in his own drying blood. Fuck. At least that explained the feeling of healed wounds. Wasn’t it enough for the stupid octokitten to kill him, did it really have to eat him too?

“That fucker,” he said under his breath.

“So you are awake then.” Nastya’s voice came from somewhere further down the corridor. Jonny hadn’t seen her before, but when he turned towards the sound he could see that she sat against the opposite wall a safe distance from the blood. She put away the screen she’d been fiddling with. “It took longer than I expected.”

“Fuck you too, I think half my body had to regenerate. How long was I out for?”

She looked down at her watch. “Twenty minutes give or take. As you may recall I wasn’t there when you died.”

“Yeah right, you fled into the vents as soon as you could. Why’d you even come back?”

“Ivy asked me to and she was much politer than you.”

“Just for the record, I hate you” Jonny moved over so he could lean his back against the wall. Marius would wake up any minute now and he could just as well wait for him before doing anything. While waiting, he fiddled with the remains of his shirt. It was properly ruined and torn almost completely to pieces, far beyond what even he could salvage. Jonny had become very good at mending bullet holes in clothes over the years, but this time there was barely any shirt left to mend.

His gun was still in its holster though and the belts were untouched so that was something. He would’ve murdered Raphaella otherwise. Maybe he should do that anyways, this was her fault after all. No, it seemed like it had been an accident and even though he’d never admit it out loud, sometimes it was nicer to spend time together without murdering each other. Just like last night. He could let it slide just this once.

Marius slowly started to move on the other side of the corridor and eventually sat up with a groan. He looked up at Jonny and judging by his expression, he came to the same ‘fuck, the octokitten ate us’ realisation as him.

“So e got you too? I swear, they have something against me.”

“You could say that.” Jonny paused, trying to decide if he should tell Marius the sappy and stupid reason he died. Marius looked like he needed some comic relief, so he settled on yes. “I tried to avenge you, but apparently Raph managed to make that octokitten produce venomous slime in addition to making em gigantic. So my revenge didn’t exactly go as planned.”

Marius let out a chuckle and Jonny gave him a small smile, happy that the joke landed right. He didn’t make fun of himself often as it left him vulnerable, but sometimes it was worth it. The whole emotional vulnerability thing was a lot more common after the polycule formed, maybe because he had much better reasons than before.

“Dunno what happened next though, care to tell us Nastya?”

“I was in the vents, how should I know?”

So she was being annoying on purpose then. “Um, you were alive for one. Maybe Aurora told you? Or Ivy since she apparently asked you to wait for us.”

“She said they were going to storage bay three, but not why”

“Then we better get going.” He stood up and held out a hand towards Marius. “You coming?”

He took it and Jonny helped him up. “Thank you.” 

Marius’ smile was so warm and sincere that Jonny had to look away to avoid going all beet-red like an idiot. He still had a hard time dealing with affection and the way Marius squeezed his hand didn’t exactly help things. Why did he have to have emotions?

He quickly let go and mumbled something about how it was no problem, then turned towards Nastya to avoid the situation. “Are you gonna come with us or fuck off into the vents again?”

“I think I might join you, it could be interesting to see what they’re doing. I’m assuming e’s still alive considering there’s no octokitten blood here”

“So they kept that fucking thing alive then, even after it killed us. There’s no fucking respect on this damn ship, I swear” Jonny started walking in the direction of storage bay three. If they didn’t have a good reason to keep em alive he’d kill that octokitten himself. Maybe he’d even succeed the second time.

“Hey, don’t insult my girlfriend!” Nastya said, hitting the back of his head.

“I’m insulting my own partners, not yours Nastya, stop misinterpreting everything I say!”

“Does that make it better though?” Marius asked.

“They’re not here right now, so it doesn’t matter,” he replied. The three of them walked down the corridor in silence for a minute or two, before Marius spoke up again.

“Why storage bay three though? Do we keep anything special there?”

Jonny considered this for some time. There wasn’t anything special about that storage bay and it wasn’t even the closest one if he remembered it right. Wait, wasn’t that where he’d kept Horsey? Maybe the cage was still there after all these years.

“I think Horsey’s cage is still in there, maybe they want to keep Nov in there”

“That’s still an awful name for a horse,” Nastya said. “Honestly, it was a pretty awful horse too”

That claim was simply wrong and Jonny would not let her insult Horsey. He’d fought his entire crew to even get him on board and he’d been a wonderful horse. Nastya just didn’t understand horses. “Excuse me, it was a fantastic name for a fantastic horse! Horsey d’Ville was my son and I will not tolerate this slander against him. He was a joy to be around and tasty when he died”

“You ate the horse?” Marius sounded horrified. “What the actual fuck Jonny?”

Jonny grinned and decided to make it even worse for Marius, maybe as revenge for making him have Feelings. “Yes I did, I ate him raw. I couldn’t leave him to rot, not when he was such a good son. He even continued the honoured d’Ville tradition of patricide”

“I feel like nothing about you should surprise me anymore,” Nastya said, “but what the fuck Jonny”

“I agree” Marius shared a look of exasperation with Nastya.

“I see nothing wrong with what I just said.” He smiled innocently at them, knowing exactly how much distress he was causing. “And don’t insult my horse again.”

Both Nastya and Marius seemed to give up, because none of them said anything and the trio continued down the corridor in silence. After a while, they came across Tim’s dead body on the floor. He was entirely covered in the death slime.

“Looks like it killed Tim too,” Marius said, stating the obvious. “I wonder why, the octokittens seem to like him”

Jonny shrugged. “He probably decided to pet em or something.”

“Do you really think he would do something that stupid?” Marius asked, poking Tim’s side with his foot. He wasn’t alive yet, so nothing happened.

“Nah, I’m just joking. I know we’re a bunch of idiots, but that’s too far even for him.”

“I don’t know,” Nastya said. “Have you seen the way he acts around the octokittens?”

“Only one way to find out I suppose.” Jonny leaned against the wall. “We could wait for him to wake up”

“Sure, why not” Marius said. “It’s not like we have anything better to do, because I actually don’t want to meet that octokitten again.”

“Speak for yourself, I want to shoot at em again.”

Nastya fixed him with one of her scary disapproving glares. “Tim will be sad if you kill em and then you’ll deny being sad about making Tim sad and everything will be extremely annoying for the rest of us. Do not shoot the octokitten.”

Jonny had always found the way Nastya somehow knew exactly what he was feeling before he even knew himself extremely annoying, and this time was no exception. Maybe he should listen to her and not shoot the octokitten, despite the fact that it killed him and destroyed his shirt. Honestly, the things he did for love. He couldn’t let Nastya get the satisfaction of being right though (but it was probably too late already, she was giving him that smug smile like she’d already won).

“What about shooting you instead? I could do that, even right now if you’d like.” He pulled out his gun and waved it in front of her. It wasn’t going to actually threaten Nastya, but a friendly death threat was always a good way to change the subject and avoid talking about emotions. 

Luckily for him, Nastya didn’t have time to quip back because Tim was starting to wake up. Once again, the Narrative Convenience worked in his favour (Of course it would favour him over Nastya, she didn’t even believe in it). 

Marius was the first to greet Tim. “Welcome back to the land of the living, what happened to you?” He offered the still-not-entirely-present Tim a hand and dragged him up to a standing position. 

Tim let out a groan and slumped into Marius’ side, which meant Marius had to take a step back to avoid falling over. Tim was at least 30 cm taller than Marius, so the leaning against him didn’t work out very well. Tim must’ve realised this, or maybe the poison-headache cleared, because he stood up by himself. Jonny decided to tease him a little.

“You look pretty out of it, did you pet the octokitten?” 

He was expecting some denial or maybe an explanation for how Tim died. He did not expect the dopey smile on his face. Marius beat him to asking the question.

“You actually did pet em, didn’t you?”

“Yes, and it was so worth it. Eir fur is so soft…” 

“Fucking dumbass,” Nastya said.

“Ashes said the same thing, but I don’t regret it”

“You know, this is actually only the second worst thing I’ve learnt today,” Marius sounded tired and resigned to his fate. “Did you know Jonny ate his horse when it died?”

“I did not know that and I very much didn’t want to know. What the fuck Jonny?”

Jonny flashed him a grin. “You know, I’ve heard that phrase a lot during the last twenty or so minutes and I still stand by my decision. Horsey was tasty and it was a worthier burial than leaving him to rot. Maybe I should get a new horse next time we go planetside, all this talk about him is making me nostalgic.”

“No,” Nastya said. “We are not having another horse on board. Do you even remember what happened last time? We are not having the Great Horse Debate again and that is final.”

“You’re no fun Nastya. Just because you didn’t believe in horses until you met mine doesn’t mean-”

He was interrupted by Tim. “I’m sorry, but shouldn’t we get going? I want to see if Nov is okay and if you start this debate again we’ll be here forever”

“Fine, we can go see your octokitten instead. But Nastya, you should know by now that I do what I want. If I want another horse you can’t stop me.”

She put her finger up at him but didn’t say anything, so they started walking again. Soon they were joined by Raphaella who came from her lab. Apparently she’d been covering the Science that caused this in the first place, so that was a relief. This ship didn’t need more giant murderous octokittens, normal ones were bad enough.

* * *

Brian had long since finished his story when he heard a squelching sound from the corridor, combined with the clanging of boots on the metal floor. That probably meant the octokitten would be here soon, so he got up from the crate he’d been sitting on with a sigh. 

They’d had a very nice time together. TS had told him what it was up to when the horse thing happened and they’d retrieved a metal net from one of the crates. The plan was to wrap it around Nov to get a better grip, since e would probably be slimy and unwieldy.

“I think that’s them, should we prepare ourselves?”

“Righty-O Brian! Take That End Of The Net And Stand Over There.” TS pointed towards a spot on the other side of the door. He did as it told him, because it probably had an actual plan of action. His own mostly consisted of wrapping em in the net and hoping for the best. They took their positions on each side of the door with the net on the floor in front of them. It was time to get this over with.

The sounds from the corridor grew louder and louder as the octokitten moved closer. The others must’ve lost Tim though, because he could only hear Ashes and Ivy. Brian became more nervous by the second. He’d been calm until now, but there was something about the tenseness of the situation that made him worry. He knew it was ridiculous, but that wouldn’t stop his mind from producing worst-case scenarios.

“Let’s hope you’re right and the venom doesn’t work on us, because I have no idea what happens otherwise”

“Of Course It Will Work, I’m Wood And You’re Metal.” It sounded so sure of itself and Brian wished he could have that kind of faith in himself. 

The problem was that it’s very hard to achieve that when your entire worldview changes with the flip of a literal switch. He’d found some loopholes, but still couldn’t trust himself to always do what had to be done and help people, even if he had to do something morally questionable in the process. He was so sure that was the right thing to do, but he would be just as sure about the opposite whenever the switch flipped. It was no wonder he could never quite trust even the strongest of convictions.

“I have been poisoned before though” A particularly nasty time a few centuries ago came to mind. 

The priest who caused the mob to shoot him into space was partly immortal after Brian saved him. He followed the Mechanisms around, hell bent on taking revenge on Brian and generally was a pain to deal with (often literally). 

That particular time the priest had found a particularly nasty poison targeting the heart and somehow managed to sneak it into Brian’s food. It had been extremely unpleasant and it was only through sheer luck the priest had escaped from the other Mechanisms hunting him down afterwards. Thinking of it, Brian hadn’t seen the priest in quite some time now. Maybe he’d finally given up or died for good, which would be nice.

“I Doubt You Will Eat Nov So You Should Be Fine”

“Right, that’s true. Thank you TS.”

“No Problem!”

He could see Ivy now. She was walking backwards and held something meat-looking in one hand. With the other hand, she tossed some of it to Nov. Ashes was on the other side of em and said something to him and TS. It was hard to make out with the giant octokitten between them though.

“I can’t hear what you’re saying,” he shouted back.

They tried again, this time with a louder voice. “I asked if you have a plan”

He gestured towards TS, who seemed to understand what he meant and started explaining.

“We Have This Net Lying On The Ground And When Ivy Steps Over It We Can Wrap It Around Nov To Get A Better Grip. Then We Carry Em To The Cage. There Is No Lock On The Door Anymore Though.”

“That’s fine,” they said. “I have one in my pocket”

“May I ask why you keep a padlock in your pocket Ashes?” Sometimes Brian had a hard time understanding why his crewmates did what they did.

“No. May I ask why there is no longer a lock on the cage door?”

“There was no key, so now there is no functional padlock. Next question.”

“You broke the lock, didn’t you?” Ivy said.

Brian threw both of them an exasperated look. “We needed to open the door to get Nov inside and there was no key here. It’s probably gone anyways, unless Jonny kept the key to his cage full of horse skeleton but knowing him, it’s not that likely.”

“Did you say horse skeleton?” Ashes asked. They were closer now, so there was no need to shout anymore.

TS cut in before he could answer. “He Left Some Mighty Fine Bones Inside The Cage!”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Ivy started, “but maybe we should refocus on Nov because I’m about to go through the door”

She stepped over the metal net and held out the last chunk of meat. Knowing Ivy, she had probably calculated the exact amount she should give to Nov at what intervals to keep em interested and to make sure it lasted all the way here. 

Time seemed to stop for a moment when Nov stood (sat? existed?) in the door opening. E paused and looked right at the meat in Ivy’s hand, seemingly judging if going inside was worth it. Maybe e’d seen the metal net or understood the plan. Maybe e wasn’t hungry anymore. Brian took a deep breath (he didn’t exactly need to breathe, but it was calming) and waited for eir response.

The moment passed as soon as it came. Nov moved forwards, over the threshold. There was a brief pause before TS shouted “Now!” and they charged forwards. After that everything was a bit of a blur, moments filled with slime and fur mixing together. Before Brian knew it, they’d wrapped the net around Nov and he held em in a tight grip (or as tight as he could anyways).

E started to produce more of the slime as soon as they’d touched em, but it had no effect on Brian. If the venom was as efficient as Jonny’s death led him to believe he should probably feel it setting in soon, but it hadn’t so he was probably unaffected by it. The slime did make it significantly harder to keep the grip on em though as it made everything slippery. Using the net proved to be a very good idea as it provided some handhold. 

Carrying Nov to the cage was even harder than just holding em. They were half-carrying, half-dragging em in the direction of the cage, or at least Brian presumed so, it was hard to see anything more than slimy multi-coloured fur. The inhuman strength did help, but Nov was taller than him and struggled a lot, so they didn’t actually manage to lift em off the ground. Brian was close to stumbling on a tentacle more than once.

It seemed to go on forever, this tiring hell of slipping and dragging. In reality it was probably closer to five minutes, but Brian thought he deserved to be dramatic sometimes. In the end they somehow managed to put Nov inside the cage and close the door behind em. 

Before he even needed to ask, Ashes threw the padlock at him so he could lock the door. It closed with a satisfying click and he could take a step back and try to calm down. He wasn’t very successful at forcing his heart to beat slower, but it helped enough for him to turn around and face his partners again.

Ivy stood beside Ashes by the door and they looked about as tired as he felt. Ivy’s shirt was ruined by the meat she’d carried, but otherwise she looked fine. Ashes carried something that looked a lot like a flamethrower. That wasn’t exactly unusual but it was still enough to get his attention. TS didn’t seem tired, it never did, but it was covered in slime. To be fair, he probably looked the same.

“So, what happens now?” he asked when it became apparent that nobody else would break the silence. 

“We Celebrate!” the Toy Soldier said, voice as chipper as usual. It slung its arm around his back in some kind of side hug. The familiar weight was comfortable and Brian put his right arm around its shoulders. Then he leaned down to press a small kiss to its temple, in one of the few spots without any slime.

“Yay us then,” Ashes said. “I dunno bout you, but this feels kind of anticlimactic. Shouldn’t there be some kind of final big fight or something?”

“Speak for yourself, you didn’t have to get em inside the cage”

“Fair enough, but it still didn’t look very epic.”

Brian rolled his eyes. “Sorry to disappoint your extravagant standards for entertainment, I hope you’ll survive.” He paused, before remembering that Ashes and Ivy weren’t the only ones tasked with getting Nov down here. “Speaking of surviving, what happened to Tim?”

Ashes and Ivy shared a look before starting to laugh. That didn’t answer his question at all, so Brian cleared his throat to regain their attention. Ivy answered him after calming herself down. “He pet the octokitten”

Tim could be a fucking idiot sometimes. Brian groaned and buried his face in his left hand (the right arm was still wrapped around TS and he didn’t intend to let go of it anytime soon). “Am I understanding you right, did he knowingly kill himself by petting an octokitten? I love him, but sometimes I wonder what he’s thinking with.”

Ivy shrugged. “He said it was worth it. Should we try to find him and the others? They should be alive and on their way now.”

“You Can Do That, But I Won’t” TS said. Brian was a little surprised at this, it usually liked to spend time with everyone. “I Would Like To Hug You Too, But Then You Will Die So I’m Going To Remove The Slime First” 

Ah, that explained it. “Maybe I should do that too,” he said.

“Sure, sounds like a good idea,” Ashes said. 

“We could have breakfast later,” Ivy said. “Ashes and I will tell the others and we’ll meet in the kitchen in half an hour”

“Sounds good,” Brian carefully removed his arm from around TS. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Three quarters of an hour later, the kitchen was filled with the kind of chaos only nine immortal space pirates can bring. Brian was trying to cook, but was disrupted by a few others who decided to “help” him by taste-testing everything. People were loudly catching up left and right, telling everyone about their role in the Giant Octokitten Incident as it had quickly been dubbed and arguing with each other. The toaster was on fire in the background.

Most of them had gotten there later than planned. Tim needed to make sure that Nov was okay, so Ivy followed him there. Raphaella had joined them to take some samples and reassured him that she would be able to reverse it. She already had a few ideas to test and with the DNA samples from Nov it would be easy to make it work. Jonny and Marius had gone to change into something less bloody and more whole.

There was already talk about writing a song, but Jonny protested since all he did was die and it didn’t make him look like a competent captain. That was ignored by the rest of them, because he was only the first mate and “we already sing about you caving in to octokitten pressure in one song, what’s another one” (He shot Ashes in the shoulder for that). In the end, it was agreed that they would write the song.

Jonny and Nastya had tried to restart the Great Horse Debate in a corner, but they were quickly stopped by literally everyone else. This was supposed to be a celebration of a plan successfully executed, which was the worst time to start another crew-wide argument/war. Those could be fun, but it was a different kind of fun better left to another occasion.

Breakfast stretched into lunch and somewhere along the way they started planning out what to do when they made landfall in a few weeks. It had been years since the last time and they wanted to hold at least one concert before the fun crime time started. Ashes wanted to build another mafia empire, so they would probably stay a little longer. All things considered, it was a pretty good morning spent in high spirits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!! Please consider leaving kudos or a comment if you liked it! 
> 
> I can't believe I've finally finished this fic and that it grew so long. Fun fact, I thought all of it would be maybe 5k, but it turned out to be 16k instead... Maybe that's because I didn't expect the later chapters to turn out how they did, but I think I like this better. Sorry about Horsey btw, it was late at night and the only name for Jonny's horse I could come up with (and it turned out great, it's an extra layer of cursed). 
> 
> Now, you may ask yourself "Raven why are you saying this is the last chapter, I see the chapter count/next chapter button, what are you doing?" Well, the story itself ends here, but there is an epilogue of sorts (that I will post right after this chapter). I promise it contains no horses (only a mention), but I have another fic planned out for the cursed horse content my brain wants to write. 
> 
> You can find me at tumblr [@therandomravenclw](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/therandomravenclw)


	6. An Epilogue: The Giant Octokitten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A song

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is the "epilogue" I was talking about. Remember the thing I wrote in the last chapter where the Mechs decided to write a song about what happened? It turns out I'm the Mechs because I wrote the song. The idea wouldn't leave me so now we're here and I hope you enjoy bc I had no idea what I was doing but I think it turned out good anyways!

This is set to the tune of "Bonny Ship the Diamond", more specifically the version made by the Longest Johns. I recommend listening along and imagining my words instead. [Here's a link to the youtube version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKMHBC0XrKc&ab_channel=TheLongestJohns), but you can find it on whatever music platform you like

The Giant Octokitten

Narration, spoken by Jonny:  
Now, watching tragedies isn’t the only thing we do and I can imagine you’re curious about what we get up to on the Aurora in between visiting planets. Well, this is a tale of a little incident that occurred some time ago. It all started with one of Raphaella’s experiments, one that she forgot to cover before leaving her lab. The entire crew was in commons and we were having a great time until we heard a weird noise from the lower levels…

(music starts here)

Verse 1 (Raphaella):  
My Science should shrink things, my crew, but it did not work as planned  
An octokitten fell in, and grew to giant size  
Now e’s roaming through the hallways, and makes some clanging sounds  
O how were we to know at all my crew, that danger lurks inside

Chorus 1 (All sans Ivy and Nastya):  
Now it’s time to act fast, let us go towards the sound  
For the giant octokitten is a-searching for our crew  
Now it’s time to act fast, let us go towards the sound  
For the giant octokitten is a-searching for our crew

Narration, spoken by Jonny:  
We followed the noise and found what was making it. Nov, one of Tim’s octokittens, had fallen into Raphaella’s Science and e was very hungry… 

Verse 2 (Jonny):  
A bite he took of Marius, he was the first to die  
I went in guns a-blazing, but soon fell towards the ground  
There was a detail we had missed: eir toxic fucking slime  
But still Tim convinced the other Mechs, to let em stay alive

Chorus 2 (Ashes, Brian, Raphaella, Tim, TS):  
Now it’s time to act fast, let us make up our minds  
For the giant octokitten started killing off our crew  
Now it’s time to act fast, let us make up our minds  
For the giant octokitten started killing off our crew

Narration, spoken by Jonny:  
I can assure you that being eaten isn’t very pleasant, but the surviving crew members, except Nastya who was in a vent instead, made a plan to capture the offender…

Verse 3 (Jonny):  
Raphaella cov’rd the Science (hey!), Tim and Ivy got some meat (ho!)  
Nov fled through the fiery corridors, away from Ashes’ flame  
E found out e was fireproof, so Tim fed em instead  
Oh feeding Nov went very well, ‘til Tim pet em and died

Chorus 3 (Ashes, Raphaella, Brian, TS):  
Now it’s time to act fast, let us make a plan B  
For the giant octokitten will be captured by our crew  
Now it’s time to act fast, let us make a plan B  
For the giant octokitten will be captured by our crew

Narration, spoken by Jonny:  
There was a cage in storage bay three, abandoned since my horse died, where the crew planned to put Nov until Raphaella could reverse the effects of her Science

Verse 4 (Ashes):  
And Ivy stepped up to the task, which Tim had left behind  
The Toy Soldier and Brian wait, to toss em in the cage  
The slime would not affect those two, for they were not made from flesh  
The fight was brief and quickly won, when Nov was led in there

Chorus 4 (All sans Nastya and Ivy): (x2)  
There’s no need to act fast, let us toast to the win  
For the giant octokitten has been locked up by our crew  
There’s no need to act fast, let us toast to the win  
For the giant octokitten has been locked up by our crew

Narration, spoken by Jonny:   
And so, the “battle” was won. Nov was soon turned back to normal size, much to Tim’s delight, and life went on. A disgustingly happy ending I’d say, but believe it or not, that actually happens sometimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked it! (Please tell me if you did, I'm very nervous about posting this)
> 
> That's all for this fic, hopefully I'll see you next time I write something <3 (Cue internal screaming bc I'm actually finished now and this fic is so long wtf)


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